


Sunshine and Tomatoes

by Colubrina



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Don’t copy to another site, F/M, marriage law
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-17
Updated: 2019-09-17
Packaged: 2020-10-20 20:30:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20681483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Colubrina/pseuds/Colubrina
Summary: Theodore Nott had every intention of ignoring the Marriage Law - the very idea the government could force him to get married was absurd - until Luna Lovegood smiled at him in the dingy office, tomatoes in her hair.





	Sunshine and Tomatoes

As far as Theodore Nott was concerned, the Ministry of Magic could go fuck itself.

He had managed to survive the Second Wizarding War unMarked, reasonably unscathed, and still a wealthy man. If his childhood home felt haunted, if his father was in prison for life, if he was shunned by most of society as the offspring of a loathed Death Eater, well, there were worse fates.

Fates, he thought, like the one facing the woman named in the unopened parchment envelope he held in his shaking hands.

Birthrates usually went up after wars. People had survived, they were happy about that, they celebrated life, so to speak. Nine months later babies were born. Not this time. This time people withdrew into shell shocked horror and didn’t come out of their warded homes. Children were educated at home rather than being sent to Hogwarts which, after the reign of terror presided over by the Carrows, didn’t surprise Theo at all. No one mingled. No one risked caring for anyone new. They all just walled themselves up and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

The Ministry of Magic, never an entity that had much concerned itself with either the feelings or civil rights of its populace, had decided, it would seem, to move things along. All recent graduates of Hogwarts, or wizards or witches who would have graduated within a particular five-year span, were to be married. At once. If they did not opt to find a spouse, a spouse would be provided for them.

Theodore had ignored the first notice. How could they make him get married? The idea was absurd.

He had ignored the second notice.

He had burned the third notice and returned the ashes to the underMinister in charge of this obscenity with some suggestions about where they could be placed for safekeeping.

And so, as the Ministry had threatened, a spouse had been provided for him. He was to come to a specific office and pick up his wife - they Ministry would be happy to waive the usual marriage registration fee - this Tuesday or all of his and all of her assets would be seized the following day. Theodore Nott would have been happy to tell them what they could do with their assumption they could find all his assets, much less seize them, but he found himself unable to condemn some witch to poverty simply because he was personally uninterested in matrimony. He couldn’t, he admitted to himself, assume whatever woman had been selected for him had had the foresight to hide her own money in various accounts around the world. He suspected, given she was still unmarried after all this urging from their benighted government, that she was as uninterested in this entire process as he was.

Perhaps it wouldn’t be too bad. They could have a marriage of convenience he supposed; Salazar knew Nott Manor was big enough for two people to live in without stepping on one another’s toes or even laying eyes on one another for months at a time.

He opened the envelope, wondering what unfortunate soul had been tied for life to the outcast, if wealthy, son of an imprisoned Death Eater.

Luna Lovegood.

Theodore stared at the name, thinking it had to be a joke. She was a member of the Order of the Phoenix. She was one of the  _ good guys _ , one of Harry Potter’s few true friends. He could picture her, tiny and blonde and casting violent hexes at Death Eaters with an almost vacant expression on her face. Terrifying. Powerful. Beautiful.

There was no way this woman was one of the  _ leftovers. _

He grimly folded the note up and shrugged. He would go and see what was going on and if whatever woman they’d found for him - be she the Lovegood girl or, as seemed much more likely, some other woman whose name had been misprinted in typical, idiotic clerical error - wasn’t interested in marriage to him he’d quietly set up a fund for her on the continent and she could live on that. 

He wasn’t going to blackmailed into marriage by some bureaucrat, and he wasn’t going to let some poor girl be so manipulated either.

His thoughts repeated themselves: the Ministry of Magic could go fuck itself, preferably with something sharp and maybe even rusted. 

. . . . . . . . . .

It was Luna Lovegood.

Theodore looked at the woman where she sat in the cheap, government chair and blinked a few times. She’d braided tiny, yellow tomatoes into her hair. She saw him staring and said, “I know, they should be red, but I thought the yellow was prettier.”

He opened his mouth and then closed it again, and looked across the desk at the official smiling - smirking - at him. “Could we have a private moment,” Theodore asked. It wasn’t really a request, and the flunky must have recognized that because he eased himself out of his chair and made a series of murmurs that sounds like, “of course” as he pushed out the door.

“I’ll just be out here,” he said before he shut the two of them in his office. “Let me know when you’re ready to do the ceremony.”

Theo waited until he heard the door click shut and then turned to Luna. He took a deep breath. “I am sorry about this,” he began. “If you… I can set up monies for you, so you don’t have to marry me. The Ministry can no more force this than - “

“It’s fine,” she said. She handed him a small box and, befuddled, he opened it. It held a simple silver band, and he immediately felt guilty.

“I didn’t get you a ring,” he said.

“You didn’t think I’d want to marry you,” she said, the logic of that both confusing and inescapable. She patted the chair next to hers. “It will be fine,” she said again, and then, “I’m not actually crazy.”

“I didn’t think you were,” Theodore said. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to say, that he was sorry, maybe, or that he was happy, or that she was peculiar and enchanting, and he wished he’d thought to bring her something for her finger that sparkled as much as her eyes did, but what came out of his mouth was, “I’m not a Death Eater.”

“I know,” she said. She reached over and took his hand, slipping the ring onto his finger. “I thee wed,” she said.

“Miss Lovegood,” he said, “Luna. You don’t have to do this.”

“I never do anything I don’t want to,” she said. “I think you should tell the man he can come in now. We can sign the paperwork and leave; this office has a bad smell, and I understand there are swans at Nott Manor. I like swans.”

“They’re mean,” he said.

She shook her head. “They are territorial,” she corrected him. “Territorial creatures protect the things and places that belong to them.”

Theodore regarded at her for a moment and then reached behind him and, without getting out of the chair, turned the doorknob so the little bureaucrat could hand them piles of paperwork to sign and do a succinct and bonding marriage vow that felt superfluous. When the man intoned the traditional “You may now kiss the bride,” Theodore stood up, offered Luna his hand, and said, “I think I will save that for the privacy of our home.”

“Well,” the man stood. “I’m glad you’ve come around to supporting the law, Mr. Nott. Given your family history, we were surprised you weren’t more interested in seeming compliant.”

Theodore was about to respond with something pithy and obscene when Luna squeezed his hand. He looked down at her and saw, with some surprise, that she had her head tipped to the side and was staring at the official with her large, steady eyes. She didn’t say anything, just stared and stared until the man began to squirm. At last, she said, “Aren’t you going to offer us congratulations? I understand that’s traditional.”

The man couldn’t get them out of his office fast enough after that.

. . . . . . . . . .

Luna gave Nott Manor five minutes before, frowning at the dark wood, she said, “This place is too sad. Too much pain. We have to go to my flat instead.” And so Theodore found himself appeared into the living room of a small flat with yellow walls, a yellow ceiling, and a bright blue circular table and no other furniture at all. It was the sky in reverse, and he stood and turned around and around and stared at the room. “This is where you live?” he asked at last. “Where do you sit?”

“On the floor,” she said.

Theo shook his head. “I need a couch,” he said. “A sofa. Something soft to sit on and read.”

Luna shrugged. “If you want,” she said. 

Theo walked over to the small kitchen area. It was just one wall of cabinets, a set of French doors that opened to a fire-escape turned porch, a sink, and a cupboard spelled to keep things cold. He didn’t even see a stovetop. Luna clearly didn’t cook, but he began to fall in love with this tiny space. The yellow sky. The blue sun. The balcony filled with plants. He spotted the tomato plant she used to get her hair ornaments, and a miniature lemon tree, and a vine that trailed yellow flowers down to the flat below. He turned back to the room to see his wife - his  _ wife! _ \- sticking her tongue out in concentration as she studied a wall.

“A bookshelf here?” she asked him.

“What?” 

“You said you needed a couch to read,” Luna said. “That means you have books which means you need a place to put books. I think here.”

Theo crossed the room until he was behind her and, hesitating at first, rested his hands on her shoulders. She seemed to sigh and lean back into him. “Are you sure you want to stay here,” he asked. “At the Manor, you could have your own suite, never have to see me. We’d be married and in compliance but no one would have to know we didn’t share a room or - “

“I should show you the bedroom,” she said. “And your house, despite the swans, is not good.”

Theo followed her, bemused, to a door that led into a larger bedroom than he’d expected. If the main room was a sunny day, this room was a clear night before darkness wholly fell. The walls were a dark blue, so dark they were almost black. The ceiling  _ was _ black, and she’d affixed tiny fairy lights that glowed with magic. “Luna,” he breathed out. “This is beautiful.”

“I thought you would like it,” she said. “Your last name and all.” She tugged him forward until she pulled him onto a large bed. He sat there, feeling ever more befuddled as he looked around. A large block of driftwood sat in one corner. He saw a door that must lead into a closet. But the room was almost bare. Nothing could hide here. Despite the darkness, nothing could lurk. 

“You couldn’t have made this for me,” he said. “They just…” he stopped and looked at her.

She ignored his assertion and with it his half-asked question. “Should we consummate the marriage now or would you rather wait?” she asked.

He nearly sprang away from her and crossed the room, using a desire to look at the driftwood as an excuse. “You don’t have to do that,” he said, his back to her. “I don't want to take advantage of you. This is… we just got shoved together by some malicious bureaucrat. I don’t have any expectations or -“

“Later then,” Luna said. “That’s fine.” He heard her get up and walk over to him, and he almost flinched when she set a hand on his arm. “We didn’t get a wedding cake, however, and I quite like cake. There’s a bakery down the street and then maybe you could bring your things over, and we could find a couch and a bookshelf.”

Theo turned and said, his voice choking, “That would be… yes. I like cake too.”

Luna nodded. “Should we have a party?” she asked. “I’m never sure what the correct social responses are to things.”

Theodore laughed a bit at that. “I don’t think many people would come, sweet,” he said. “I’m not someone you socialize with.”

“Harry would come,” she said.

Theodore felt that peculiar feeling of flabbergasted charm steal over him again. Of course he would. Harry Potter, savior of the wizarding world, would come to his wedding reception. Would come to  _ Luna’s _ wedding reception. He fought the urge to laugh hysterically and managed to say, “I suppose he would.”

“Ron and Hermione too,” she said. “They fight a lot, though.”

Theodore thought of the bushy-haired, self-righteous swot who’d helped save them all and tried to imagine being married to someone who thought she was right all the time and who had to make sure you  _ knew _ she was right all the time. He felt vague stirrings of pity for Ronald Weasley who had, so it would seem, gone from a notorious harpy of a mother to an equally shrill wife. “Better him than me,” he muttered.

“She doesn’t believe in anything she can’t see,” Luna said in what sounded like agreement. “But she means well.”

“Do you want a party?” Theo asked.

Luna seemed shy and uncertain for the first time since he’d seen her in the Ministry. “I don’t get invited to parties,” she said at last. 

“Me either,” Theo said.

“But I like them,” she added.

He reached out and took her hand. “Then we’ll have one,” he said. “After we get a couch.”

. . . . . . . . . .

They got a couch. It was blue, of course. They got a bookshelf. Also blue. He brought over his favorite books and his clothes and talked Luna into permitting a house-elf to bring prepared meals from Nott Manor.

She insisted on trading tomatoes and lemons for the meals; once the house-elf had been reassured that this was  _ not _ some kind of weird equivalent of clothing and that the very new Mistress Nott was  _ not _ unhappy with him, he took the tomatoes with a look of utmost respect and if Theo was fairly sure there would soon be a large bowl of stasis preserved tomatoes in the kitchens at the Manor, well, it wasn’t like he was even allowed into the kitchen at home

At his old home.

He was more than welcome in the kitchen, such as it was, of his new home. There was hardly any food in it, and no way to prepare any, and Luna forgot to eat half the time. The first night he spent in her home - in their home - he watched her unbraid her hair and pull the yellow tomatoes out one at a time. “I could help you?” he offered. Wordlessly she sat in front of him on the floor, and he sat at the edge of their bed, and he silently undid plait after plait. Her hair was darker than Malfoy’s. She was just blonde, not lacking in color, and as he handed each tomato to her, she popped them in her mouth and chewed on them until he tugged the last one free. Then she turned around and knelt up and held the last one toward him. When she pressed it to his lips, he understood and opened his mouth and ate the last of her wedding finery. It was sweet and warm, and he stared at her mouth in their dark bedroom, lit only by the magical stars. 

“You promised me a kiss,” she said. “I don’t know how they go, so you’re going to have to explain.”

“I, uh…” Theo bit down on the inside of his cheek. “You don’t have to - “

“I don’t do anything I don’t want to,” Luna said. “Do you?”

“I’ve done a lot of things I’d rather have not,” Theo admitted to her. 

“Would this be one of them?”

He shook his head and reached a hand out to trace his fingers along the side of her jaw. “It would not,” he whispered. He slid down the end of the bed, so they were both on the floor and cupped her head with his hands and lowered his lips to hers. She tasted of sunshine and summer and yellow tomatoes, and he wondered what he had done, what could he possibly have ever done, to deserve this. Her lips were soft, and they parted slightly under his own, and he stopped to brush his nose against hers before he pressed his mouth against one side of hers and then the other before letting his tongue lick tentatively at her lower lip. She opened her mouth wider, and he groaned as his hands convulsed at the back of her head and pulled her against him. He could feel his fucking cock stir into attention, and he wanted nothing more than to spend the whole damn night finding out whether all her skin tasted like sunshine, whether all of her felt like summer, but if he did that he’d fall into the well of her grey eyes and never come out again.

He pulled back.

“I like kissing,” Luna said.

He let out a low laugh. “I like kissing you,” he said roughly. “I like kissing you quite a lot.”

She scooted forward and settled into his lap, and Theodore Nott found himself with a lapful of this woman he’d just met and ended up married to, and that was not making his arousal go away. “You’re afraid,” she said. 

He closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the mattress. “I am,” he admitted.

She pressed her cheek against his shoulder, and he could feel her hair tickle his skin. “The worst is behind us,” she said. 

“It was pretty bad,” Theodore said. He wondered how a person could smell of sunshine. How was that even possible? She turned her face into his neck and, with horror, he realized her eyes were wet. “Don’t cry,” he whispered. He  _ begged _ . How could this girl be crying? “Whatever happened to you, whatever happened, I promise you I’ll… it won’t happen again.” He leaned away so he could reach between them and wipe at her cheeks. “What happened?” 

“Nothing,” she said, trying to turn her face away. “I was just in the dark and the cold.”

“Where,” Theo demanded. She didn’t say anything, and he held her hair back from her face and tried to will her to answer him as he stared into her eyes. “Where were you? Who hurt you?”

“No one hurt me,” she said. “It was just cold. I was in the cellar, locked away.” She shrugged. “I was… the Death Eaters used me to threaten my father, that’s all. It was just cold.”

“And dark,” he said, beginning to understand the living room that looked like the sun and the bedroom that looked open to the sky. 

“It’s over,” she said. “You don’t have to be afraid.”

He wondered if she were talking to herself or to him.

Why would a girl who’d been held captive in the war want -

“Why would you accept marriage to me,” he whispered, hating himself for the things people like his father had done to girls like this. “I told you I would - “

“I wanted - “

She stopped talking, and Theo froze, afraid now if he moved she’d not finish her thought. 

“I wanted you,” she said at last, very softly. “I knew if I waited, it would be you. Luna. Nott. Night. Moon. There was no way it wouldn’t be you.”

“You don’t even know me,” he whispered. 

She shook her head in his lap and said, “The moon and the night have always known each other.” Then she lifted her head and pressed her lips back to his. He pondered how the moon could taste of sunlight as he returned her kiss.

. . . . . . . . . .

The way Harry Potter stood, pint held in one hand, eyes darting around the yellow room, Theodore suspected he thought he’d fallen into some kind of fever dream. Very little else could explain a party with the so-called Golden Trio in the same small flat as a two of the bad guys, one so bad he even had the Dark Mark on his arm. 

Draco had himself braced in that way he did when he expected to be attacked; his sneer was on, and his eyes were hooded, and he managed to imply with every twitch of his shoulders that the people he was associating with were beneath him. Luna, thank Merlin, ignored all that and hugged the man. “I’m so glad you could come,” she said. “I have a present for you.” She handed him a chain with tiny charms attached. Draco took it and, nonplussed, examined the cheap metal figures. 

Astoria said thank you, holding her hand out to Theo’s bride, as though being presented with a craft project at a wedding reception in a walk-up flat was wholly normal. The Greengrasses had instilled their daughters with manners to spare and, if Astoria was more than capable of using etiquette to freeze a person out, she could also use it to charm and set strangers at ease, and that’s what she did with Luna. “You have a beautiful home,” she said. “Smart to not live at the Manor.”

“It’s sad,” Luna said.

Astoria agreed and added conspiratorially, “Maybe you can convince Draco to move out of his family mausoleum as well.”

“There’s nothing wrong with old family places,” Harry Potter said. Theo snorted until he remembered that Potter had inherited the old Black townhouse from his godfather. Draco had gotten drunk shortly after the war and ranted at some length that that was probably not even legal and that Potter should go back to whatever cupboard he’d grown up in rather than steal from purebloods.

Draco had issues.

“Old family homes are nice,” Theo said, trying to be gracious to his guest, “but I admit I prefer Luna’s flat.”

“You must be as daft as she is.” 

Ronald Weasley, Theo noted, had not improved with time. He wasn’t sure why his bride had wanted to invite the Weasley couple and would have assumed it was because it would be awkward to invite Potter and not Weasley, but Luna didn’t care about things being awkward. For whatever reason, she liked Ron Weasley.

Well, he liked Draco Malfoy, and a more problematic friend would be hard to find.

“He’s not,” Luna said to Weasley. “Daft, I mean.” She smiled, and Ron Weasley squirmed. 

Theo had come to realize that Luna wasn’t at all daft either. She ignored most social slights because she didn’t care what people thought of her, but she wasn’t unaware of them. 

“You flatter me,” he said now, wrapping an arm around her waist. “I may well be round the bend.”

“We’re all a little off after the War,” Luna agreed. “How are you doing, Harry?”

Potter looked down into his drink and didn’t answer, but his wife did. Ginny Potter, nee Weasley, shrugged and said, “He has good nights and bad nights, like all of us.”

“That fucker,” Theo muttered. He didn’t mean anyone to hear him, it was just his usual automatic response to the thought of the crazed wizard who’d done his best to ruin all their lives, but Ginny caught the imprecation and smiled.

“I agree,” she said. “Like some kind of creeping rot, he just poisoned everything.”

“And now you’re married.” Astoria’s party training frowned on dwelling on homicidal madmen as topics of discussion. “I thought you’d move to the continent before you let the Ministry pair you off.”

“I was going to,” Theo admitted. “I was going to set whatever bride they’d found for me up with a hidden trust fund, so the Ministry’s threat to seize assets - “

“Is that what they’re doing?” Hermione Weasley was predictably outraged.

“You didn’t know?” Theo looked at her. “Oh yes, get married or be poor. Probably the only really legal recourse they have. After the Muggle-born Registration thing, people get their hackles up if you threaten to take their wands away.”

“But you saw Luna, and it was true love?” Astoria prompted him. She and Draco had gotten married as soon as she’d graduated. They probably would have waited if the Ministry threats hadn’t hung over their aristocratic heads, but they’d been a couple since the War. Not many people would speak to Draco Malfoy, and Astoria had made a point of singling him out in public, and he’d fallen and fallen hard. 

“Not exactly,” Theo said.

“He liked my tomatoes,” Luna said. Hermione and Ron exchanged a glance at that, a smirking, amused glance that made Theo want to show them the door and never see their smug faces again.

“She wanted to get married,” Theo said with a shrug. He didn’t want to talk to these people, these friends of his wife’s, about how she was summer and warmth and light. Draco, he thought, would understand. Draco, who watched Astoria as she sipped from her glass and did her best to charm the surly war heroes as if she were the only rose in bloom in a garden filled with brown and withered grasses. Draco knew what it meant to despise yourself for things you had had no control over. Draco knew what it meant to have a person see you as whole, as desirable, and what that meant. The glittering war heroes with their perfect lives would never understand.

“Doesn’t sound very romantic,” Hermione opined, “but if you’re happy, Luna…” She trailed off, her opinion that no one could possibly be happy married to a Death Eater, or the nearest thing to one, more than clear in her voice.

The reason Hermione Granger had had no friends in school other than the pair of gallivanting boys whose homework she’d done was equally clear to Theodore. That his own peculiar beauty had been similarly lonely, however, irritated him. That these people were the closest thing she had to school chums made him angry. Luna should have had an adoring fan club, she should have been petted and admired for her cleverness and her strength and how true to herself she was. He had been lonesome and alone and solitary because he didn’t deal well with people less clever than himself. He admitted that was a flaw in his character, it just wasn’t one he had any intention of addressing. Luna, however, was as near to perfection as he’d ever met.

She should, he thought, have been adored.

“I like your hair,” Astoria was saying.

“Thank you,” Luna said. “But of course you do; you like light things.”

For a moment, Theo thought she was referring to Draco’s own pale hair. Astoria, however, looked too startled and pleased for that to be what Luna meant. “Not many people see that,” Astoria said.

Luna’s eyes flicked from Theo to Draco, and she said, “Stars look like tiny spots, not fire so fierce and strong we can see it from across the universe.”

“We should have lunch,” Astoria said.

“Why are we talking about Astronomy?” Ron demanded.

Ginny gave her brother a disgusted look.

. . . . . . . . . .

“Luna,” Theo groaned as she did what she referred to as “experimentation” with her mouth. She was kissing along the line of his jaw, licking now and then at the end-of-day stubble, and then moving to his neck. She’d positioned herself on his lap on their blue couch, and he thought he might go utterly mad with the way she explored his skin.

“I liked the party,” she said. “I like Astoria.”

“Tory’s great,” Theo said. “Luna…”

She tipped her head back, bit her lip, and regarded him with those steady eyes. “You don’t like Ron,” she said. “And he doesn’t like you.”

Theo struggled to find something to say other than, “Weasley’s a prat,” but before he could articulate anything, Luna nodded. “He can be mean,” she said. “He’s very loyal to Harry, but a bit insecure and that makes him cruel.”

“And his awful wife?” Theo asked without thinking.

Luna, however, laughed. “She’s not awful,” she said. “She just can’t bear the thought of being thought foolish or wrong.”

Theo considered Hermione Granger and decided that, no, she really was awful. Luna simply articulated in detail what made her that way. “What am I?” he asked, curiosity what this woman thought of him winning out against the better judgement that told him some things were probably too painful to hear. 

“You are a walled garden,” she said. Theo closed his eyes, and she wrapped her slender arms around his neck and leaned into him. “You defend yourself against everyone.” She stopped to consider. “Perhaps everyone except Draco Malfoy.”

“I’ve known Draco a long time,” he said. “He’s difficult.”

“People are,” she agreed as she sat with her cheek against his shoulder. 

“Not you.” Luna didn’t respond to that, and Theo held on to her. After a while, he said, “I suppose if I’m a walled garden, you’re the key to the door to open me up.”

“No,” she said. She sounded surprised. “It’s okay to want to be private. It’s okay to guard your heart and life as treasures not to display before the world. No one has the right to walk through your days just because they want to. You’re solitary.” She snuggled into him more firmly. “I’m the dragon at the gate.”

. . . . . . . . . .

Their first real conflict came when Luna came back from lunch with Astoria Malfoy. She’d met the woman at the Manor she shared with Draco, whose parents had vacated the premises to what was supposed to be a Dower Cottage at the edge of the premises. 

Only the Malfoys, Theo thought, would call a building with more than 20 rooms a ‘cottage.’ 

Luna had had a lovely time, she’d said. She liked Astoria, she liked the gardens, Astoria was putting in a medicinal herb garden of her own. She’d wanted to be a Healer but, of course, with the prejudices rampant in the post-War world she couldn’t do that now, especially being married to Draco. Theo had let Luna’s words just float over him. He loved the way she could talk about biscuits one moment, a trip she’d taken to Spain the next, and on and on, somehow always spiraling back to where she’d started. When she said, however, ‘the solarium is much nicer than the cellars’ he sat up from where he’d been lying on their bed.

“How would you know about the cellars,” he asked, working to keep the words level. “Did they put in a new wine room or something she wanted to show you?”

“Oh no,” Luna said. She was pulling off her socks and doing some exercise she’d taken to that somehow involved stretching each toe one at a time. “That was where I was with Ollivander during the war before we were all rescued.”

Theo could feel rage begin to coil in the pit of his stomach. “Did Draco know you were there?” he said. Asked Demanded. “Did that sodding bastard know there was a schoolgirl locked in his sodding  _ cellar _ ? Cold and dark and hungry? Did he know that?”

“This isn’t your battle,” Luna said. “The war is over.”

Theo stood up and nearly flung the closet door open to search for his shoes. He was going to go talk to Draco. He was going to go explain a few things to Draco. By the time he was done Draco Malfoy, his best and only friend, would be wholly 100% clear on how very unacceptable it was to lock women in his cellar. 

“This isn’t your battle,” Luna said it again, the words louder this time and he turned. She was still seated on the bed, but she’d stopped wriggling her toes, and she was looking at him with her large grey eyes.

“It is,” Theo said. “You were hurt.”

“Exactly,” Luna said. He stood in their bedroom, staring at her. “ _ I _ was hurt,” she said. “Not you.”

“I want to… he needs to…”

“He knows,” she said. “And it wasn’t his fault. And I need the war to be over.”

Theo stood, angry and trapped and wanting almost nothing so much as to go and punch Draco with his fists until the man lay bleeding on one of his expensive marble floors, white hair, and white skin and white floor all stained with red blood. Maybe from there he’d go to the Dower ’Cottage’ and do the same thing to that damned Lucius Malfoy. Theo could hear his breath going in and out and in again, and Luna sat watching him, and he breathed, and at last, she said, “I think we should consummate our marriage now.”

He wanted, as it turned out, one thing more.

She tasted of sunshine. She tasted of sunshine everywhere.

She tasted of sunshine and tomatoes and love and getting drunk on apple wine at midday in a world where there were no locked rooms and no cellars and where she took all the light of the sky and reflected it back to him where he stood in his darkness and solitude. He held her hand as they lay in bed, and she squeezed his fingers.

“It’s going to be all right,” she said. 

And she was right.

. . . . . . . . . .


End file.
